motorcycles: Test riding a prototype all-electric motorcycle

thomasj (

thomasj) wrote in

motorcycles,
@ 2008-08-17 20:09:00

Current mood:

giddy

Test riding a prototype all-electric motorcycle
My wife finally got me to go horseback riding today, so I rode my Ducati Multistrada up to her stable. After the horse stuff (which wasn't bad), I decided to go up to the local biker spot here in the Bay Area, Alice's Restaurant (no, not the one from the song).

After some good twisty action and a patch of fog on Skyline Blvd, I rolled into the Skywood Trading Post (across from Alice's) around 5pm, and had a late lunch. The parking lot was mostly deserted, but just as I was finishing my sandwich, a fellow on an oddly quiet Ducati 900ss rolled in.

We struck up a conversation after I noticed the rather huge rear sprocket on the 900ss. It turns out Forrest, which was his name, is the founder of an all-electric motorcycle company; and the 900ss was his prototype. Forrest is a former Tesla employee (of Tesla Motors - the all electric cars).

Sorry, no pictures, as I didn't have the camera with me. But! Forrest was field-testing the prototype and let me ride it!

OH. MY. GOD.

I took the electric 900ss for a good 5 mile run. The bike is AMAZING. No clutch and no gear shift. Torque is 100% from the turn, and it has torque in SPADES. The bike has a top speed of 100mph, and I got very close to that speed, very very fast. Thankfully the bike still has the Brembo brakes. It has at leas the torque of my Multistrada, if not more.

I was expecting it to be entirely silent, but this is not so; there is a noise that increases with speed, much like the whine of a turbocharger. It was actually quite enjoyable, and I didn't miss engine growl at all. Didn't need earplugs! Even more so, I didn't miss the heavy vibes from my v-twin. The electric engine is smoooooth. Throttle control was precise and perfectly linear, and completely predictable.

Forrest did some videotaping of me on my return (more field research). I asked a few questions... the bike has a 80mi range. It charges in 6-8 hours on household 120v, or under 2 hours with a transformer for 240v. It weighs slightly more than the stock 900ss; aside from the electric engine, some dashboard changes, and frame modifications, it was all stock. The batteries are good for 300 full charge cycles; or considerably more if they aren't drained completely before charging.

Forrest says his company is currently "stealth" (I assume they are still in search of funding), but I'm eager to see what comes out of it. If they manage to covert or create new bikes with the 150mi range and 500+ full charge cycles he was talking about, they're going to have a real winner.

(Post a new comment)

	prometheandrone 2008-08-18 03:18 am UTC (link)
	delicious. What happens when you roll off the throttle? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	thomasj 2008-08-18 03:21 am UTC (link)
	Slows down, as you'd expect it too; smooooth. Partial throttle gives you partial power, and no throttle and you coast to a stop. It does have engine braking, but it's more mild than an inline-2 or inline-4, and again, very very smooth. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	prometheandrone 2008-08-18 03:23 am UTC (link)
	I hate when I roll off my throttle (inline 3 - BMW K75) and it jerks me back unless I clutch. It's killer at low speeds like in 1st gear in parking lots. What does it do at stops, standing still? (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	thomasj 2008-08-18 04:42 am UTC (link)
	At stops, it doesn't do anything, it just sits there. No noise, nothing. It's kinda strange at first, since you don't 'start' the engine, you just turn the key - which doesn't give any feedback except for the lights turning on. You could turn the key and just blast off at full throttle, no waiting for oil warm up or anything. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

lihan161051
2008-08-18 04:48 pm UTC (link)

Interesting. Vectrix has a solution I like a bit better, with a bidirectional "throttle" where the backwards direction activates either a slow reverse (sometimes handy for getting out of tight parking spots) or regen, depending on whether the bike is moving or not. Regen is extremely handy given the limited space for battery capacity, especially if you're riding in hilly areas where you can get some energy back from the regen braking going downhill. (The Vectrix maxi-scooter is currently in at least one dealership in Austin, and supposedly the motorcycle variant is on the way RSN.)

Did they say whether it was an AC or DC motor? I'm guessing probably 3-phase brushless AC, given the guy worked for Tesla, but the chain drive makes me wonder about that.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	thomasj 2008-08-18 06:12 pm UTC (link)
	That's a good question, but one I didn't ask. :( (Reply to this) (Parent)

	whytraven 2008-08-18 04:26 am UTC (link)
	Wow! This sounds absolutely awesome. I'd love to see where this one goes. :) (Reply to this)

	puskunk 2008-08-18 04:31 am UTC (link)
	80mi range isn't bad. This sounds pretty close to prime time and I am NOT a EV lover by any means, and think hybrid cars are stupid ideas. But in a vehicle as light as a motorcycle, this seems like a great idea. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	rubberninja 2008-08-18 04:34 am UTC (link)
	Agreed. Electric was phased out a century ago because of its major weaknesses... but if an engineer can make it work, then that's awesome. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	thomasj 2008-08-18 04:44 am UTC (link)
	Well, to be fair, electric technology has come a long, long, LONG way in 100 years. And petrol-based fuels were cheap as dirt for most of that. If battery technology can get small and light enough to give equal range and speed as gas cars? Everyone will ditch gas cars. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	jecook 2008-08-18 05:44 am UTC (link)
	Hells yes. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	rubberninja 2008-08-18 07:12 am UTC (link)
	Small, light, and equal range and speed as petrol... AND you don't have to drop a few thousand every other year to get new batteries, then of course. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	red_phil 2008-08-18 11:56 am UTC (link)
	Once you can recharge it in 60 seconds then yes. Until then it sucks for long journeys. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

palmir
2008-08-18 02:21 pm UTC (link)

Things to consider when comparing to gas cars: How often does a typical person take a long road trip? And how much does that rate drop as gas increases?

Just need a sales/marketing team who can convince people that it's a legitimate option. Which is cake: don't mention the long journeys bit, just focus on the majority of trips being under *five* miles, let alone anywhere near the single-charge range of the thing. Hell, as long as the infrastructure's around, you can keep a gas-car for long trips and use the EV for the other vast majority of your driving.

They won't be for everybody at all times, but then... what vehicle *is*?

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	red_phil 2008-08-18 04:08 pm UTC (link)
	They will be fine for some folks. Personally 95% of my bike trips are under 10 miles. The probelm comes once or twice a year when I load up the camping gear and go on a 1000 mile road trip. That is only 5% of my riding, but at least 75% or my reason for owning a bike in the first place. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	polyanarch 2008-08-18 04:20 pm UTC (link)
	80% of my bike trips (by time on the bike) are >150 miles. There are many <5 mile trips but there are also many >200 mile trips with multiple gas stops within. This bike wouldn't work for me except as a city commuter. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

thomasj
2008-08-18 05:32 pm UTC (link)

I would be unsurprised if you were in a 1% minority. Maybe not?

At least here in the Bay Area, we've got two major classes: The weekend-warriors and the daily drivers.

I do 80mi round-trip on my daily commute and this seems to be at the high end. I think I have a friend who does closer to 100mi, which is kind of high too. Most people look at me like "WTF?" when I mention that.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	Two words: hobbfather 2008-08-18 04:47 pm UTC (link)
	Second bike. Two more: Motor Swap. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Two words: red_phil 2008-08-18 09:22 pm UTC (link)
	you offering to pay for it? (Reply to this) (Parent)

	Re: Two words: red_phil 2008-08-18 09:24 pm UTC (link)
	I am not antiElectric bike BTW I just feel that recharge time is a major stumbling block. Perhaps exchangable battery packs is the answer. Bike rides in with one flat battery and rides out with another charged one. (Reply to this) (Parent)

lds
2008-08-18 09:03 pm UTC (link)

I am an EV-lover, just not an early adapter... well, okay, I guess that makes me an EV idea lover. I think this is great too... an 80-mile range puts it within spitting distance of some good, small commuter bikes these days.

One thing to watch out for is the speed at which you can get this range: if the 80-mile max is only available by cruising under 35mph, that limits its utility, and most EV makers these days try to downplay the practical limitations.

Nonetheless, if they put this in a Sportster or SV650, that'd make it an awesome commuter. I'll be watching this one! OP, thanks for the post!

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	uebereinhorn 2008-08-18 04:51 am UTC (link)
	Wow, this is exciting! I'm a fan of hearing the engine growl but the smooth is good too! (Reply to this)

	skreidle 2008-08-18 07:15 am UTC (link)
	Do want! (Reply to this)

	crash6767 2008-08-18 01:45 pm UTC (link)
	wow you're a lucky man! (Reply to this)

	wah wah boring safety brigade PSA eideteker 2008-08-18 03:07 pm UTC (link)
	"The bike has a top speed of 100mph, and I got very close to that speed, very very fast." "Didn't need earplugs!" Was this test performed in a vacuum? Please be aware wind noise above ~40 can cause serious hearing damage. http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&q=motorcycles%20wind%20noise%20hearing%20damage Please protect your ears! (Reply to this) (Thread)

polyanarch
2008-08-18 03:18 pm UTC (link)

Wind noise is the major noise I hear on my VFR (with cam gear noise being #2) I don't hardly even HEAR the exhaust note. I almost always wear earplugs as the wind noise becomes annoying in any trip over 5 miles. (I usually don't wear earplugs on local city trips as speed is much lower and the trips so much shorter).

Tire whine and chain whir are also going to make a bit of noise. If your exhaust noise on a motorcycle is so loud that you can no longer hear that there is a significant wind noise/engine whir/tire wail/chain whir -then you probably are riding a bike with an exhaust so loud that it is bothering just about everyone else on the road (and beside the road and maybe even 1/2-mile away from the road...)

The whole thing about how the Hybrids are so quiet that blind people are getting run over is BS. Tire noise on most new cars is way more loud than the engine noise. Motorcycles should be as quiet as cars to passersby if we want to survive as a publicly-acceptable activity. It is bad enough that we have a serious image problem due to safety and hooliganism. Adding our obnoxious noise into the mix just adds flame to the fire.

Potato-potato-potato! (at 139dB)

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Loud pipes save what, now?

lds
2008-08-18 11:54 pm UTC (link)

By the way, there was a recent short discussion in which I solicited opinions on others' experiences with loud pipes. Here's one example. Do you have experience on both loud and quiet bikes that would serve as informally-collected data for want of better statistics? Would you be willing to share it, or is this pretty much just a strongly-held opinion?

(We have to differentiate with you, because most of your "ranting" style opinions are just plain stupidly wrong... as in this comment, where you were proven wrong in pretty much the very next cresponse.)

We also had a short debate on the subject in this thread, to which you also might like to respond, too: I'd be interested to hear a quiet-bike advocate respond to my comparison to a helmet, as the commenter there didn't really do so.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	Re: wah wah boring safety brigade PSA thomasj 2008-08-18 05:25 pm UTC (link)
	I commute 80mi per day, and wear earplugs all of those 80mi. For this ride I left them off to get more feedback from the bike. The bike at 80mph is considerably less noisy, to the point that I felt the earplugs were not necessary for my /comfort/. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	polyanarch 2008-08-18 03:10 pm UTC (link)
	Sounds cool. But 300 recharges wouldn't last me much more than a year or two. And the batteries probably cost what my VFR did. In another 10 years we might be driving decent electric vehicles. Hopefully we'll start building some nuke plants to provide the power and not just building more oil-fueled plants like we are now. (Reply to this) (Thread)

thomasj
2008-08-18 05:29 pm UTC (link)

The 300 charges are full charges. 80mi x 300 = 24,000 miles. Yeah, some people can do that in a year or two. I think that's why they're shooting for 150mi range x 500 for production bikes. 75,000 miles is about as much as many people get out of their bikes at all...

Also, if you don't fully drain it, requiring a full charge cycle, the number of charges is supposed to go up very quite a bit.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

I=E/R

polyanarch
2008-08-18 03:45 pm UTC (link)

"It charges in 6-8 hours on household 120v, or under 2 hours with a transformer for 240v."

This statement is a little bit misleading. You can't simply just plug a transformer into a 120v circuit and make 240v and decrease the charge time. Yeah, you COULD do it -but you are NOT going to draw any more power from that 120v circuit using such a setup than you would otherwise.

The limitation of your average household 15A 120V circuit is going to be the breaker or the fuse. The over-current device (breaker or fuse) will trip after pulling 80% continuous load which is 12A. 12A x 120v = 1440 watts. That is all you are going to be able to draw from your typical 15A 120v receptacle. A 20A receptacle will be able to draw 16A on a continuous load or 1920 watts.

Transforming to 240v after this will not change anything except lose about 3-5% in I-squared-R losses to heat in the X-former windings.

The reason why a 240v OUTLET will be able to possibly charge faster is because of I=E/R A 240v circuit will have half the current that a 120v circuit would have at equivalent wattage (power). So a 15A 240v circuit would be able to draw 12A of continuous amperage without tripping the over-current device (breaker or fuse) for total of 12A x 240v = 2880 watts. That's twice as much power. A 20A 240v outlet will yield 3840 watts! That's a lot more power available to charge (and thus shorter charge times).

Almost every home/apartment in the US has a 120/240v service (some have a single-phase 120/208v service if they are running on a large 3-phase service in the building, but for all intents and purposes just consider that to be roughly equivalent to a 120/240v service.

This is why electric driers, AC units, Stoves/ranges, and anything that draws a lot of power is run 240v. You can use similar #14AWG wire for a 15A 240v outlet that you can for a 15A 120v outlet and #12AWG wire for a 20A. In order to draw that kind of power through a 120v receptacle one would need to fuse it at 30A or 40A and run #10 or #8 wire and the NEMA receptacle size would be HUGE and expensive. Nobody does this because of the added cost. It's just easier to run a 240v run of 12/2 or 14/2 wire and put in a simple low-cost (smaller sized) 15A or 20A 240v plug in. If you need even more power than that (and electric charging stations often do) then one needs to run 10/2 or 8/2 wire -or wire in pipe, and stick in a 30, 40A 240v outlet/receptacle . If you really want to go big then run #6AWG wire for 60A 240v which will give a whopping 11,520W of continuous charging power! But a 60A 240v circuit might tax many household services. You'll need that much power to charge a real electric car that has range in the 100-200+ miles neighborhood in under 10 hours.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Re: I=E/R

lihan161051
2008-08-18 05:01 pm UTC (link)

Back when there was aggressive promotion of BEV cars (mostly before the oil companies and car manufacturers gutted the California ZEV mandate), there was some development in high voltage and possibly high frequency AC charging, to get a fairly large amount of power into the onboard charging system without too much of those exact (I^2)R losses you're talking about. A fair bit of engineering went into doing that safely, but I'm not sure whether any of those interfaces were standardized before the big internal-combustion players succeeded in shutting down further development of the technology.

The production BEV stuff I've seen so far for two-wheeled designs usually includes an onboard charging system with a standard 3-prong 120VAC cord that coils up and stores in the under-seat compartment or something similar. The battery packs for those are in the 3-4 kWh range, so that's usually enough power to complete an 80% fast charge in about 2 hours and a full equalized charge in about 4 hours.

One thing to note: Charging NiMH's at high ambient temperatures can seriously damage the battery, or so I've heard from folks who drive RAV4-EV's. The RAV4's lose capacity fairly rapidly if charged when it's over 88 degrees outside, because the internal temperature goes up into the 120's or higher and degrades the cells really fast. Overnight charging is the best plan all around, because of that and because you're using off-peak power which is considerably cheaper (and more environmentally sound) than charging at afternoon peak rates (and getting power from less efficient and more polluting peak-capacity systems). Just FYI. :)

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	Re: I=E/R thomasj 2008-08-18 05:27 pm UTC (link)
	The bike would come with an optional transformer that would convert household 240v to be suitable for the charging system for the bike. Sorry for any confusion. (Reply to this) (Parent)

alikkon
2008-08-18 06:04 pm UTC (link)

I'm not sure I'd even find it acceptable at 150 miles... I'm not sure I'm even comfortable with the 220 (to empty) range on my current bike. Touring is a large part of why I own a bike (I know, it's not a touring bike, but that's just too bad for it).

The best math I can do to compare owning and insuring a second electric commuter bike, even if it's fuel was free, would make it cost me more to operate in the long run. Yeah, I'd use less fuel, but at this point, I'm not sure it would be worth it for me.

I'm waiting to see what happens with Switchgrass-based Ethanol (*NOT* Corn-Ethanol) at this point. If it becomes a common fuel and they design some bikes to run on it, I'll be more likely to pick one of those up than an electric vehicle.

(Reply to this)

bothrops
2008-08-18 06:09 pm UTC (link)

I know it's not politicly correct, but I love my gas burning motorcycle. The smell of fuel, the purr (Bonnies are about as loud as a sewing machine), and being able to reheat a burger (don't knock muffler meat till you try it). Plus a fill-up in less than five minutes. 80 miles won't cut it for me I'm afraid. That, and the 300 charges means it might last 1-2 years at most.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	thomasj 2008-08-18 06:11 pm UTC (link)
	I agree. But did everyone miss how this is only a prototype? The production version is supposed to have 150mi + 500 /full/ charges. If you don't full charge, that number is supposed to be much larger (like 2x - 3x). (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	alikkon 2008-08-18 06:13 pm UTC (link)
	I didn't miss that, but 150 is still extremely short unless I'm only commuting, and not going out for entertainment rides. I go out riding with my dad's Goldwing group once a month on average (and those trips are 300-600 mile days), as well as going on my own long trip days on occasion. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	thomasj 2008-08-18 06:18 pm UTC (link)
	Sure, this isn't going to work so well for touring/long distance pleasure. My pleasure rides rarely exceed 150mi, so I expect this would work for a good group of people. Another thing not mentioned is the cost. I spend $10/day on gas commuting, but a full charge on this guy is < $1. That's quite a savings. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	qness 2008-08-19 09:37 pm UTC (link)
	Wow! Sounds awesome, can't wait to see the real thing! Lucky dog, you! (Reply to this)

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